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Thursday, June 20, 2013

Common Core practice tests now available online

The Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium, one of two collections of states that are designing online tests aligned with the Common Core standards, has released online practice tests in both ELA and math for students in grades 3-8 and 11.

The tests will help schools prepare for implementation of the Smarter Balanced Assessment System in the 2014-15 school year, the organization says.

The practice tests allow teachers, students, parents, and other stakeholders to experience the features of online testing and gain insight into how Smarter Balanced will assess students’ mastery of the Common Core. However, they don’t encompass the full range of content that students will encounter on the spring 2014 Field Test and should not be used to guide instructional decisions, the consortium warns.

The practice tests include constructed-response, selected-response, and technology-enhanced questions. Performance tasks, which are longer activities that ask students to apply their knowledge to solving “real-world” problems, are available for ELA and will be added for math by this fall. Scoring keys will be available July 1.